Also, never perform unmanaged resource acquisition in initializer lists. In other words, either use "resource acquisition is initialization" (thereby avoiding unmanaged resources entirely) or else perform the resource acquisition in the constructor body.
And warning #2
Perform every resource allocation (e.g., new) in its own code statement which immediately gives the new resource to a manager object (e.g., auto_ptr).
http://www.gotw.ca/gotw/056.htm
